Witch in the White City: A Dark Historical Fantasy/Mystery (Neva Freeman Book 1) by Nick Wisseman (popular books to read .TXT) 📗

Wiley’s guise, knowing nothing but that he was a Boer guardsman who fancied Neva. And when she’d kissed him and indicated her willingness to do more, he’d acted as any man would have.

Any man who wasn’t her brother.

Yet he hadn’t known the full extent of that sin. Not until later. Months later, when—just an hour or two ago—he’d woken in his true form and begun recalling everything that happened during his rotating prison of false aspects. And now ...

Now he remembered.

But it was worse than he knew. “Look at me,” Neva whispered.

When Augie uncovered his face, she accepted the pain in her stomach and allowed it to expand, to bulge until it distended far enough to protrude several inches beyond her breasts and strain her dress almost to bursting.

“I lowered my ribcage to keep from showing,” she said when he didn’t react—didn’t move, didn’t blink, didn’t breathe. “To keep it in. But I could feel it ... changing. Adapting inside me; it didn’t need much space. I thought that was because it was a skinchanger’s get. I guess I was righter than I knew.” She chuckled, but there was no mirth in it. Just guilt. And hate. And shame.

A flake of ash fluttered into the carriage. “I never knew you were so good at lying,” Augie said. “But you certainly have a knack for it.”

“Why would I lie about this, Augie? Do you think I want it to be real?” Her stomach twitched as if something inside were stretching its legs, bending its little skinchanger bones to take advantage of the additional room. “Did you see that? It’s kicking.”

Her brother’s smile was so sickly now that Neva felt ill herself. “This is desperate, sister. Even given what I confessed to you earlier, this is ...”

She bared her swollen belly, and on cue, the right side pulsed.

Augie recoiled, but Neva gestured for him to come closer, to put his hand on her abdomen and feel the truth.

He hesitated, then flinched when her belly beat again. “This isn’t a trick?”

“This isn’t a trick.” She held out her hand.

He took it and let her guide his fingers to her stomach. It jerked once at his touch, and the tiny impact rippled through Augie in a lengthy shudder. “God help us,” he murmured. “What a family we are.”

Neva extended her other hand. “Come down with me.”

He studied it. “Why?”

“Just come down with me.”

He looked at her face, then her stomach, then her face again. Finally, he nodded.

And whistled.

Chapter Thirty-Six

BENEATH THE CARRIAGE—IN front of the Algerian and Tunisian Village, the Street in Cairo, and all the other nearby exhibits of the Midway—men in the middle of murdering each other paused to listen. For most, Augie’s tune was too faint to have full effect. But everyone seemed to at least slow, and some of the combatants lost their balance and fell over.

Neva wasn’t the slightest bit affected.

She’d maintained her bone earplugs throughout the conversation with Augie, reading his lips and body language. There would be no puppeteering for him his time—not with her.

He realized it almost immediately; perhaps she should have feigned compliance. But when she didn’t react to the first few bars of his whistling, he stopped, shrugged, and shoved her.

The push, delivered with a casual hand to either shoulder, shouldn’t have sent her back more than a step or two—Augie didn’t lean into the motion or thrust his arms at all forcefully. Yet as if she weighed no more than a feather, his freakish strength launched her into the air, hurtling her over the carriage’s rear seats and out the door. It happened so fast she didn’t have a chance to scream, much less resist.

But once Neva was in open space, she seemed to have all the time in the world.

Below, she could see Brin and Derek doing the screaming for her. Elsewhere, the forces of labor and capital resumed their struggle amidst the expanding fire—the only combatant consistently gaining ground, ravenous despite having consumed the Court of Honor: Manufactures was more smoke than structure now, and a garden of flames grew atop the roof of each great building save Agriculture ...

Hanging above the Fair, Neva could view it all. She even took a moment to scan for Dob and his cousins. Then her arc passed its apex, and she began to drop.

Slowly.

So slowly she seemed to float.

Neva looked up: a gossamer web unfurled above her, finely woven and cupped over an invisible pocket of air. The webs’ threads emanated from her shoulders, wrapping under her armpits before billowing out to form her silky parachute.

Augie pressed his face to one of the carriage’s windows and watched her descend a few feet, his expression implacable. He must have fastened the web when he’d shoved her. Fastened a web ... What couldn’t he do with the talents he’d collected?

She turned away. Augie couldn’t control himself. Or face up to what he’d done—he had no limits now.

And that was why he couldn’t remain in the world.

“Neva?” asked Derek as he steadied her landing in front of the Moorish Palace.

A soldier looked at her in awe, but the distraction earned him a brick to the head from a stone-faced striker.

“Are you all right?” called Brin, still training her rifle on Augie, but casting glances at Neva’s prominent stomach.

“Later,” she said. “Do it.”

The Irishwoman didn’t seek further confirmation. She just sighted down the barrel, breathed out, and squeezed the trigger. Her aim was true: the bullet shattered the carriage window Augie stood behind, striking at chest-height—a heart shot.

But the bullet shattered too, breaking against his flesh and flying into a thousand pieces that mingled with the glass shards raining down from the Wheel, a glittering shower that reflected the light of the rising sun and the fires eating the Fair.

“Did he get that from you?” Neva asked Brin when the gleaming bits had ceased falling.

“Perhaps, but I can’t mold metal that fast—not to stop a bullet. Bugger learns quick.”

Derek pointed at Augie’s carriage. “What do we do?”

Neva